The main purpose of this scheme is to ensure that these vehicles have been designed and constructed to modern safety and environmental standards before they can be used on public roads.

From 17th June 2003 motorcycles, three-wheeled and light four-wheel vehicles must comply with European Community Whole Vehicle Type Approval (ECWVTA). Without such approval, vehicles cannot be registered for use in Great Britain. If a certificate of conformity to ECWVTA cannot be produced then the vehicle will be subject to a MSVA examination.

MSVA checks that vehicles constructed for non-European Economic Area markets comply with British Law. Even vehicles outwardly similar to European-specification models, but intended for other markets, can often be unsuitable for use in Great Britain without at least some modification.

Important news - delay to scheme
The Motorcycle Single Vehicle Approval scheme will not be implemented until 8 August 2003. This is a delay of about seven weeks to the proposed introduction that was scheduled for 17 June 2003.

The effect of the delay will be to limit the issuing of new registrations only to vehicles with Certificates of Conformity (CoC) in accordance with Directive 92/61/EEC (i.e. European Community Whole Vehicle Type Approval - ECWVTA). This situation will remain until SVA comes into force and Minister’s Approval Certificates can be issued and used to register vehicles.

We recognise this may cause difficulties for some traders or manufacturers and to reduce this to a minimum DVLA and VOSA will provide additional services before and during the delay.

DVLA will relax its normal rules on the early or pre-registration of new vehicles in the run-up to 17 June.
VOSA will examine vehicles during the 7-week period in accordance with the scheme’s requirements (subject to Parliamentary scrutiny of implementing Regulations).
Traders and manufacturers normally expecting to register vehicles in June and July are therefore urged to make contact with their nearest DVLA Local Office, details of which can be found at www.dvla.gov.uk.

For details of the voluntary examinations please contact one of the VOSA MSVA test stations, details of which can be found below.

Background Note.
From 17 June 2003 new rules relating to the first registration of motorcycles and associated vehicles take effect in Great Britain. From that date the EC requirements for Whole Vehicle Type Approval (ECWVTA) will apply to vehicles being registered for the first time in Great Britain. The Department of Transport intends to implement a Single Vehicle Approval (SVA) scheme more suited to the needs of personal importers, manufacturers of small vehicles, parallel and grey importers. This scheme involves the inspection of each vehicle to national standards but will be noticeably cheaper than full ECWVTA.

The requirements of the scheme were circulated to stakeholders on 27 January 2003 along with the draft implementing Regulations. At the same time we notified the European Commission in compliance with the technical standards directive 98/34/EC. This directive allows the Commission a three month period in which to make formal comments on national technical standards: in issuing such comments, the “standstill” period is automatically extended from three to six months. These provisions are binding on Member States.

A detailed opinion was issued by the Commission on 8 April 2003 relating to one aspect of our proposed Regulations. This extended the deadline to 30 July 2003 and there is no way to avoid the delay. We are currently negotiating with the Commission a revised legal clause and we expect the Regulations to enter into force on 7 August 2003 (subject to Parliamentary assent of implementing Regulations). This is the earliest date we can reasonably implement the Regulations following the EC deadline.